Alarm systems, such as fire detection systems are generally known. Such systems are typically based upon the use of a number of peripheral devices, zo such as fire detectors or proximity detectors, dispersed throughout a building, and at least one warning device that alerts occupants of the building to the presence of a fire. While each fire detector could be connected to its own warning device, fire detectors are typically connected to a common monitoring panel. This is useful because of the need to send notice of any detected fire to a central monitoring station. The often referred to as a control panel, may be linked to higher level systems such as to a fire department computer or central monitoring station.
The use of a common monitoring panel requires that a connection be established and maintained between the panel and each fire detector and each warning device. In the past, the connection was established by installing at least two wires between each fire detector and the monitoring panel and between each warning device and the monitoring panel. This provided a direct physical connection for each device to the common monitoring panel.
More recent systems have relied upon physical bus systems to connect devices to the central monitoring panel and/or radio systems where data signals rather than specific wires are used to identify peripheral devices when commissioning a system.
Whichever type of central monitoring panel system is employed there remains a fundamental and time-consuming issue on installation and commissioning, this is the need to give the signals from peripheral devices feeding into a control system an identified meaning. Commissioning is the activity of converting installed hardware into a functioning system to perform a given task, such as fire detection and reporting or intruder detection and reporting.
To illustrate the commissioning issue an incoming peripheral device signal in an installed system may be on, say, inputs 1 of 16 in the control panel but the relevance of the signal on this basis alone is limited. This is made more complex with bus systems where devices may each report on a common bus using a multidigit identification code. As such an incoming signal may indicate, for example, that smoke has been detected, but where is another matter. Methods of overcoming this can be to visit each peripheral and manually record its complex identifier so that it can be recognised and the given a meaning in the central monitoring panel such as by means of allocating a system address, alternatively meanings can be assigned at the central monitoring panel level and each peripheral can be re-assigned an identifier. The larger the installation the more significant is the requirement to identify which device may be providing a signal to a central monitoring panel or may require reception of a signal from a central monitoring panel.
Whatever the activation process by which a peripheral is integrated in a way that gives its communications meaning in an alarm system, the activation is complex and hence with current methods time consuming and error prone. Common errors are the assigning of more than one identifier or address to a given peripheral and/or assigning the same address to multiple peripherals. These errors can be hard to detect and time consuming to rectify. What is needed is, to an end user, a less complex system, apparatus and method for activating peripherals in an alarm system. An end user in this context is a commissioning engineer who transforms an installed set of hardware into a functioning alarm system.